Another title from a Humble Bundle got quite some time ago and only getting to it now.
My first impressions of it were not great because of the quirky art style which seemed to be a bit of a knock-off of a Tim Burton film. But thankfully, this similarity faded as I went through it. You play as a young psychic kid who has gone to a summer camp for psychic kids where they are groomed and trained to become psychic agents or "Psychonauts". The basic gameplay is kind of similar to your basic action RPG. You explore and talk to people which unlocks dungeon-like levels where you have to perform platforming and general killing tasks to unlock badges that give you new skills and abilities. There are also many collectibles to get all over the place that will up your level (some skills have level requirements), increase your health, ammo and act as currency to buy necessary items. All the while having weird and wacky interactions with the other kids and teachers. Most of the design and writing are done by Tim Schafer who is well known for his humorous writing style having been behind such hits as Full Throttle, Grim Fandango and Brutal Legend. While his writing is generally quite funny, I found myself flip-flopping a lot on the writing on this one and half the time I couldn't decide if the writing was awful, awesome or awfully awesome. But thankfully, it did tend to go on a upward trend as the game progressed and got better.
There are a lot of genuinely interesting levels and set pieces too. A lot of them involve using a small magic door to go into peoples minds. So the level is based on what that persons psyche is like. And since everyones mind is different, this creates a very wide variety of themes and levels ranging from the perfectly geometrical, neat and organised mind of a german to a surreal suburban neighbourhood full of spies and conspiracy theories belonging to a mad security guard and even a risk like board game belonging to the mind of an orderly directly descended from Napoleon Bonaparte. This made for many different and interesting levels each one quite different from the last and needing different tactics. And because you were also dealing with people's psyches here you also did end up dealing with quite a lot of mental and emotional problems. The solving of which were usually the primary goal for the level. But these were actually dealt with in a surprisingly mature and proper manner which was quite a surprise to me in what was basically a comedy game.
One rather annoying downpoint was the grinding that was necessary to get money for required items and to get past level restrictions for new skills. It felt like this was just padding to make the game longer and was a bit tiresome. There were also a few weird difficulty walls along the way and a huge one right at the end that was very annoying seeing how close the ending was. But these were fairly minor quibbles in an otherwise very enjoyable and funny adventure.
I put this game off for quite a while because I really didn't have much of a clue what the hell it was about and I really hadn't ever heard anything about it. But once over a few initial hurdles at the start, it was a fun little action RPG that did result in quite a few laugh out loud moments. LOL.
